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Tag: public relations

Something interesting happened on February 1st. in the incredibly exciting realm of online backups. Let’s just address one thing first: backups. Please make backups and regularly. Even better, have an onsite and an offsite backup. For me, offsite used to mean burning to DVD-R and shipping to the parents, nine time zones away, and thus preserving all my family’s pictures, video and a few other bits in case something Bad (™) happened.

Initially I went with JungleDisk/Amazon S3 for this, but in November 2009 shifted to Mozy – unlimited backup for 5USD a month which made more sense for me and meant I could also backup all the .dv videos and music, then about 140GB in total, now about 175GB.

As I say then, on Feb. 1st. Mozy dropped their unlimited plan, and implemented a tier based system. Instead of unlimited for 5 USD/month, it would be 50GB for 6USD/month and additional fees per 20GB above that. For me then, that would be about 21USD / month – a decent price increase.

– you set the baseline too low – I see a lot of people on Twitter, and myself between 150-200GB, and for us, there’s just no economic reason to stay once our plans expire. For me that’s 10months, though I need to be careful to avoid the auto-renewal if I decide to leave (and unfortunately take my parents with me). I don’t think we’re abusing your generous unlimited offer with that amount per month. My fee likely covers my cost to you.

– but honestly, what irks me most is that I learn about this on Twitter, and on Lifehacker. I don’t have an e-mail from you, I don’t see anything on the blog from you. That just seems to imply you’re not interested in customer relations. As I implied above, that I only get mail from Mozy after they’ve charged my credit card, but not for a product offering shift like this means that I think you’re going to have a painful reaction from users who don’t watch every product announcement not in their mailbox.

Again, it’s a bold move by Mozy and I’m sure others will follow, and users will chose to stay or go, but really, whoever handled the rollout of this announcement needs to be given a little talking to.”